Moby Dick: or, the White Whale eBook

Now, from this peculiar sideway position of the whale’s
eyes, it is plain that he can never see an object
which is exactly ahead, no more than he can one exactly
astern. In a word, the position of the whale’s
eyes corresponds to that of a man’s ears; and
you may fancy, for yourself, how it would fare with
you, did you sideways survey objects through your
ears. You would find that you could only command
some thirty degrees of vision in advance of the straight
side-line of sight; and about thirty more behind it.
If your bitterest foe were walking straight towards
you, with dagger uplifted in broad day, you would
not be able to see him, any more than if he were stealing
upon you from behind. In a word, you would have
two backs, so to speak; but, at the same time, also,
two fronts (side fronts): for what is it that
makes the front of a man—­ what, indeed,
but his eyes?

Moreover, while in most other animals that I can now
think of, the eyes are so planted as imperceptibly
to blend their visual power, so as to produce one
picture and not two to the brain; the peculiar position
of the whale’s eyes, effectually divided as
they are by many cubic feet of solid head, which towers
between them like a great mountain separating two
lakes in valleys; this, of course, must wholly separate
the impressions which each independent organ imparts.
The whale, therefore, must see one distinct picture
on this side, and another distinct picture on that
side; while all between must be profound darkness
and nothingness to him. Man may, in effect, be
said to look out on the world from a sentry-box with
two joined sashes for his window. But with the
whale, these two sashes are separately inserted, making
two distinct windows, but sadly impairing the view.
This peculiarity of the whale’s eyes is a thing
always to be borne in mind in the fishery; and to
be remembered by the reader in some subsequent scenes.

A curious and most puzzling question might be started
concerning this visual matter as touching the Leviathan.
But I must be content with a hint. So long
as a man’s eyes are open in the light, the act
of seeing is involuntary; that is, he cannot then
help mechanically seeing whatever objects are before
him. Nevertheless, any one’s experience
will teach him, that though he can take in an undiscriminating
sweep of things at one glance, it is quite impossible
for him, attentively, and completely, to examine any
two things—­however large or however small—­
at one and the same instant of time; never mind if
they lie side by side and touch each other.
But if you now come to separate these two objects,
and surround each by a circle of profound darkness;
then, in order to see one of them, in such a manner
as to bring your mind to bear on it, the other will
be utterly excluded from your contemporary consciousness.
How is it, then, with the whale? True, both his
eyes, in themselves, must simultaneously act; but
is his brain so much more comprehensive, combining,
and subtle than man’s, that he can at the same
moment of time attentively examine two distinct prospects,
one on one side of him, and the other in an exactly
opposite direction? If he can, then is it as
marvellous a thing in him, as if a man were able simultaneously
to go through the demonstrations of two distinct problems
in Euclid. Nor, strictly investigated, is there
any incongruity in this comparison.